Trowels are well known in the art and have existed for many, many years for various purposes such as spreading adhesive or cement, by way of example. With respect to the spreading of adhesive, generally the trowel blade is serrated or notched on one longitudinal edge. Generally, such prior art trowels consist of a substantially planar trowel blade and a handle assembly which is welded to the blade to provide a three piece structure. Although such an arrangement is suitable as a trowel in the final assembly, it is costly to manufacture as well as to ship, taking up, for example, as much as 80% more packing space than if the trowel could be shippped in a disassembled state. The difficulty with shipping prior art trowels in a disassembled state is that normally the end user does not have welding facilities to complete the assembly of the trowel nor is it efficient to maintain such welding facilities for the limited purpose of assembling a relatively small quantity of trowels. Moreover, applicant is not aware of any prior art trowels which can be shipped in pieces and easily assembled into a rigid structure. In addition, certain prior art notched trowels for speading adhesive have the notched blade on only one side and are specific for right hand or left hand work requiring an inventory of both types of trowels as opposed to providing a universal type of trowel in which the handle may be assembled in one of two ways depending on whether the assembled trowel is to be used for right hand work or left hand work. These disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the present invention.